RAMI

SHAMIR

About this image Rami said, "This is the only photo that Barney ever took of me. Astrid was usually the one documenting everything, but during a hospital stay in 2010, Barney was playing with my phone, and decided on a photo."

Train To Pokipse - A Portrait of Rami Shamir

by BillyBoy*, 2015.

Rami Shamir is one of the greats. The GREATS. He really is. When you meet a genuine GREAT, they resonate, they buzz, like cicadas. You really know it if you have anything at all left of your original human Wiccan antenna on you, the invisible soul ones which vibrate at high frequency when in the company of a GREAT.

Rami is an author and activist. I had such a scorching desire to write this portrait that I feel almost shy now to do so because my enthusiasm for his writing and the great affection I have for him makes me feel as if I am exposing my most intimate sentiments about a friend in public, something I do not do often. I can enthuse for friends and people up to a degree, but this is a big exposé of the nitty gritty of my most inner thoughts. I get the impression I am writing in my diary more than the usual feature I do about about a friend and/or artist I admire. I found that when I started to write about this young author, the only thing I was compelled to express were very personal thoughts about him, that is what came to mind immediately. This is my very personal, very wonky, love letter to a friend, a brother. This is most likely because I truly feel close to him and have such a strong desire to tell people about his talent and his writing. His writing enchants me so. It was my first encounter, the writing was the first introduction to someone I now can say with great pride is my friend.

I have been very lucky in my life so far. I was passionate about literature since an early age having been raised with a Montessori tutor who was a descendant of Durante degli Alighieri better known as Dante and have loved all genres of writing, from the most traditional to the most avant-garde. Now I have to do something not very pretty and almost communicatively slutty; overt name-dropping. Here goes: I can say I knew some of the greatest writers of the 20th century; Salvador Dali, Allen Ginsberg, Bill Burroughs, Timmy Leary, Norman Mailer, Warhol Superstar Jackie Curtis, Truman Capote, Jean Genet, Edmund White, Yves Navarre, David Robilliard, Gerard Wozek, Rene Ricard, Brion Gysin, Marguerite Duras and Francoise Sagan to name just a few. Phew. That was a strange mix between deeply embarrassing and pride, as all of these people from my past were immensely gifted and I truly admired them. But, they are nearly all now dead, only Edmund and Gerard are still alive, thank the Lord. Premature or old age, they mostly are no longer on this plain, hélas. I still love their writing and in various degrees, their past friendship with me. Now on with the story and in sorts, why I had to vomit up my old friends fancy names, to make a point:

One thing I think which was a thread connecting all these authors as well as a number of others I’ve known, perhaps less known but deeply talented, was the fact they knew how to speak about writing and that seemed to be the only thing which they spoke about with an electric-charged voice. Writing. It was never a subject that fit in between usual talk amongst non-writers who can bounce subjects around like whores bounce tricks around in an understaffed whorehouse on a Saturday night. Most people when they congregate speak of all sorts of things, from sex, money, addictions, business, and fun to all of the arts, gossip, small talk etc. and in my circle of friends, endless camp rhetoric, dahling. Its pretty hit or miss as far as intensity goes and it passes the time before we all die I guess. Little chatter, chitchat and usual casual talking amongst friends can be engrossing, though rarely and at its worst flatlined and monotonous. Writers, the real ones, the Old Skool ones, have essentially one subject on their minds to speak about. Writing. It was always about the word and how you string them into sentences, how difficult it usually was and how satisfying it could be. I simply adore talking with my writer friends because I can willingly fall into the whirlpool of thought about words and their stringing. When I started out in this adult life, age fifteen, I also awkwardly began to write. Very slowly I suppose I evolved my own way to get these words out in a way that pleased me and occasionally was understood by others. I still write. I think each writer I’ve known, especially the really truly Algonquin-worthy authors I have learned something more about the word and the profoundly important ways it can be used to link humans to one and other. Rami Shamir is such a person. Though rather young in years of linear time, he is as Old Skool as you can get.

As of late, living in Switzerland, in a small city far from the citadels of the world I see less people and get to know fewer writers these days and even less of those I admire and anticipate to read. I still have writer friends whom I love but sadly I rarely see them. I mostly speak on the phone or Skype and I am momentarily back into the almost tender embrace of their talents as talking about writing is as fascinating as the writing itself. I make acquaintances rather often and exchange words that don’t necessarily make my synapses pop and glitter and glow, but it can be compared to lazy not very satisfying sex. It’s okay, but not getting my synapses aroused like really talented writers do. For a few years I felt that I have yet to befriend one that enthralls me as others have in my past writers such as the late David Robilliard and the endlessly creative Gerard Wozek. So, I reach out, via internet and have befriended writers these few last years. Often it’s a casual meeting, a friend of a friend leaves a comment, and a conversation gets going. One who stands way above most recent writers I have met and have known is someone who I can admit enthralls me is the very American writer Rami. America has such a noble tradition of great writers it is very apparent Rami is following that grand tradition.

Rami and I became fast friends. I don’t even know how it all happened but I recall reading about his first indie novel, Train to Pokipse and simply by the blurb about it, ordered it, and it turned out I was amongst the very first people to actually have ordered this self-published book. I received it and set out to read it, not expecting anything in particular but as of the first page I was roped in with a sort of sensual word lust. I did not realize it but I picked it up and did not put it down until every word was lavished upon my mind.

I fell in love with the way the words were so exquisitely arranged to tell a story that captures the zeitgeist of the moment for young gay men.

But how do I start to tell the story of this somewhat amazing, highly charismatic young author? I guess, like Dr Seuss said, we have to start “at the beginning…” where he was discovered by one of literature's great, iconic names, Barney Rosset. Rosset, who founded Grove Press and won legal battles for freedom of speech and uncensored writing is known for so many things in American literature I’d need to write a hundred extra pages to just outline the basics of his star dusted and rather mythical career. He founded, in 1957, the Evergreen Review, which encouraged hundreds of counterculture and Beat authors from Allen Ginsberg, Hubert Selby, Jr., Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Che Guevara and Jack Kerouac. So fascinated by the counterculture and it’s supposed censorship, he fought it in other medium’s such as film where, for example, he purchased the American distribution rights for the highly controversial and nearly pornographic film, I Am Curious (Yellow). He was implicated in the success of authors from Samuel Beckett, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz Kenzaburo, Harold Pinter, Henry Miller, my friend William (Bill) S. Burroughs, to Eugène Ionesco and Tom Stoppard, John Rechy, and Khushwant Singh, all Noble Prize winners and leaders in the art of arranging the written word. He is known for having printed, after winning a long, drawn out legal battle, the uncensored version of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and he was the American publisher of Henry Miller’s steamy Tropic of Cancer. Amongst many prestigious awards, he was Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, which is pretty much the highest place a writer or supporter of literature can go in France. Rosset’s last protégé was Rami Shamir and he was aching to see Train to Pokipse published. Sadly, he passed away in 2012 at age 89, fighting to the very end for the expression of true and honest writing. He is known not just for his literary savvy but for being an activist for the First Amendment in the USA which essentially allows freedom of speech and creative speech, that art should not be censored. Though he published Malcolm X, Samuel Beckett and pretty much all the post-war great intellectuals his last literary blessing was awarded, rightfully so, to Rami. About Train to Pokipse he eloquently said, "TRAIN TO POKIPSE is a Catcher in the Rye for the new century, and Rami Shamir is an authentic literary voice for a new lost generation". He edited Train to Pokipse with passion and did so with ageless gusto but it was destined to be his last book under his approving wing. He passed away just two weeks after the finalized version was published and he sadly left Rami to fend for himself. Death is never on time or choosing the good, convenient downtime moments to arrive. Death always seems to gallop up to people just at their busiest periods of life. Lucky are those who have their house fully in order when Śmierć a.k.a to the comic book era’s name for him, the Grim Reaper, puts in his ultimately unavoidable appearance to take one across the river Styx with the help of the indifferent Charon, the guy who does his rowing for him. Of Rosset Rami recently said, “I was really fortunate in life to be the last in a long line of great authors with whom Barney Rosset worked closely; shaped, made his own. Barney was like the country of France. No matter where an author had been before, Barney transformed them into one that was his very own: Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, William Burroughs, even D.H. Lawrence. For authors who, like myself, reached Barney young (Kathy Acker and John Rechy are among the noteworthy mentions here), there had been only been darkness—sometimes pitch black—and then the Barney light.”

Rami is thirty-three years old and of Russian Jewish decent almost identical to the family who adopted and raised me. So, I really can relate to him and can say that in a sort of certain way know the mind set, to a degree, of his upbringing. I permit myself to feel close to the homestead he was raised in as Americanized Russian Jews have a personality type. Passion and drama, devotion and enthusiasm are amongst the traits I know from this culture, as well as, on the downside, stubbornness and drama-queendom. As a Russia Jew, Rami has the usual beautiful dark features of his background, vivid blue eyes with exceptionally pretty eyelashes and he looks like a perfect replica of a Beat Generation author, though he is utterly of now and today. He lives in the contemporary and world of today but what makes him so interesting is enamored by the traditional and classicism of the past.

He is essentially homeless, often lives with his mother Mira, whom he adores, and has a sister, Angela, to whom he is also quite devoted. When he is not living at home, he is taking good ol’ New York City Transit System trains zigzagging across New York City and State, living with various friends, all devoted supporters. There is notably the sublime Jack Doroshow, otherwise known as Flawless Sabrina, Mother Flawless, or simply the Queen. It is the very same Queen who produced and starred in the 1968 film, The Queen, a most mythical and perhaps the singularly most sublime early documentaries on transvestism and drag culture perhaps only younger to Mae West’s 1927 play written for (though never opened on) Broadway, The Drag. Jack is truly someone who has achieved being both ethereal, angelic and fascinating and tough, real true grit survivor of the 1960s which was an overtly hostile world prior to our current one which, relatively speaking, is a lot more embracing of all of the varied, colourful and meaningful people once called “outsiders”. Currently Jack is having his personal archives of his life, a unique array of artifacts and information of drag and gay culture being organized. It is a Non-Profit Organization founded by Flawless Sabrina, Zackary Drucker, and Diana Tourjee and with an elegantly eponymous name, the Flawless Sabrina Archives. Despite his work on this very important historic documentation for which has been a unique participant he finds time to support and help Rami.

Rami is a very sentimental, a very, almost cinematically emotive young man as all good Russian Jews are, or again, at least from my own personal experience. I don’t know this for fact, but I bet he cries easily and gets dewy-eyed hearing the almost wartime tales of authors of lore and long ago. I find this very endearing and very rare because so few young talents care for the historic truth and truisms of the past. Currently with friends in the former great places for authors to be, the Black Mountain College, everything that evokes the glory of authors past excites him. When we speak about Black Mountain College and it’s lore he speaks of it as if he is part of its alumni. It’s utterly enchanting to hear him speak of it with a lilt of longing and but also of esteem. He finds beauty in the long ago romance of writers being supportive of one and other which I understand and said in a recent book I wrote actually. I feel and I think he does too, as if it is being nostalgic for things and eras we did not live as if we had. It’s metaphysical. It’s quantum. It’s string. It feels so real because we’ve lived the entire history of these subjects in our minds, dreams and thoughts for so long and love it so much it genuinely feels as if it is part of our linear time history. When I hear Rami speak of Black Mountain I get the impression he is filled with joy and I admire it very much and though we are on the phone thousands of miles apart, it’s as if we are curled up on a sofa and talking like we are the oldest friends in the world. In fact, we have had no problem in chatting for twelve hours at a pop and I must say, it really is if it’s a channeling of some long ago Algonquin round table chat. I play Dorothy Parker to his Samuel Beckett.

When it is not all up-close and good feels, we relate to each other on the harshness of being artists and I think his life, is considerably harder than mine. He has worked so hard that it appears that all that has happened to him, including being a participant in Occupy Wall Street, has been endless hard knocks and unfair treatment by the mainstream literary world. This doesn’t include the fact he was so greatly admired by Rosset who was anything but mainstream even at the end of his glorious and illustrious life. Rosset enter stage left was a real Godsend in so many ways. It’s a fabulous calling card for those who know who he was and can feel the awe that knowing Rosset evokes. Rosset ultimately sacrificed his large estate and fortune rallying the great authors of the 20th-century whom he published. Even he had been subjected to the grim unfairness of conventional publishing. When Rami first told me the trials and tribulations he’d endured (and the stories Rosset told him) I thought immediately of what Cacciaguida, Dante’s great-great-grandfather said to him in a letter when he was exiled from Florence, Italy; “... You shall leave everything you love most: this is the arrow that the bow of exile shoots first. You are to know the bitter taste of others' bread, how salty it is, and know how hard a path it is for one who goes ascending and descending others' stairs ... »